Whip, breasts, chain | AT THE GAMES | bondage stories

The games were under way by the time they had gained admission to the Governor's box, which over-looked the stadium from the best point of vantage, half way along the longer axis of the elliptical arena, and on the south side, shaded from the sun by the tiers of seating rising behind it. Their elegance of clothing and bearing, together with their cultivated speech, gained them entry where lesser mortals might have been refused, and they stood to one side, politely waiting for the end of the contest that had just started.

To their surprise the competitors were not grizzled gladiators, or men armed with net and trident, as they had been used to, but two naked women, carrying whips. The two women in the amphitheatre circled each other warily, linked by a chain that joined their left wrists, ensuring that each was always within striking distance of the deadly black snake whip in the other's right hand. They were stark naked, the heat of the sun and their fear, anger and tension combining to leave their bodies gleaming with sweat and the oil that had been applied to ready them for the contest.

The older of the pair was probably in her early thirties, still handsome, though her figure carried a little surplus weight that showed in soft folds at her waist and belly, though only enough as yet to lend her a certain sensual voluptuousness. Her long dark hair was caught up with a leather thong to keep it off her face and breasts, twin features that showed something of the same fullness, the globes heavy and soft, but not yet drooping, the nipples large and red, standing out now in hard erectness as if made rigid by the dread of the deadly kiss the leather might give them.

Her opponent was several years younger, no more than mid twenties, blonde where the other was dark, matching her in height and length of leg, but without that slight generosity of form that her rival displayed. Her breasts were hard and high set, the teats a soft pink with large areolae of the same hue, each standing to attention as rigidly as the ones she faced, threatened with the whip as the other's were threatened by her.

The younger woman struck first, lashing out suddenly and catching her opponent around the waist, the thick black thong wrapping round the upper belly to crack the tip on her hip. She gasped with the pain, but her own whip had moved the instant the other had committed herself and, as her younger opponent drew back her arm, exposing her bosom, the older woman's counterstroke cracked across the tender young breasts, just below the turgid nipples.

She shrieked in pain, and threw her whip arm across her chest to shield it. She would have clasped the ravaged dugs with her other arm, too, if she could, but her opponent yanked hard on the chain linking them, spinning the younger woman sideways, exposing her naked back, across which the black whip drew a sudden crimson line.

Stung again, and realising her danger, the other lashed out with the whip, frenzied blows almost at random, trying by sheer ferocity to beat her enemy down, and the two women exchanged a furious series of slashing cuts to body and

face. The younger had the speed and freshness of youth, but she had been weakened by the shock of those first two deadly cuts to her now bleeding breasts and back, while the older woman had more weight behind her blows, and was calmer in their placing, doing more damage with two then her opponent with three.

They swung round and round on an invisible pivot at the mid-point of the chain joining their wrists, sometimes swaying one way, sometimes another but, all the time, blows falling on bare flesh, their backs, their waists, tiring them with debilitating hits on the arms that swung the whips, forcing screams as a lucky stroke found breast or vulva.

It could not go on this furiously and it was craft that brought it to an end. The older deliberately let her whip arm fall away, inviting a blow to her breasts, admittedly from a weakening opponent, swallowed the pain and, while the younger woman was off balance, sent the whip down to curl round her ankles, yanking back viciously at the same time as extending her left fist towards her opponent. The double effect of the catch around her ankles, and the threat of the coming fist, toppled her on her back. The slack chain gave no support, and the older woman lashed her quarry where she lay, trying to struggle to her feet but driven back by a flurry of heavy strokes, until she could take no more and threw away her whip, turning half on her side to get what protection she could, her whip arm wrapped around her breasts, the hand covering her bent face.

The enthusiastic crowd, both men and women, roared their approval, waving down-turned fists to show they wished the winner to take what vengeance she wished of her defeated rival. All looked towards the Governor's box. He whispered to his advisers either side, then displayed his own thumb, also turned down.

The victor waved her whip in salute.

"The iron, Your Excellency?" she called.

"No," came the prompt reply, "the girl fought bravely enough. You may see she doesn't rob you again in a hurry, three strokes will do it, but she does not deserve to be de-sexed entirely."

The older woman bowed in acceptance, though her disappointment was evident. Four more naked women came into the arena and seized the vanquished girl by the arms and legs, dragging her out until she lay on her belly like a starfish, albeit one striped all over with red and purple bars. The victor stood at her head and nodded to the women.

While those at her arms knelt on her shoulders, pinning her chest to the ground and preventing her from twisting, the two at her feet pulled them up and apart, lifting her hips off the sand. Once, twice, thrice, the victor brought the deadly whip down with all her force, driving it into the crack of the buttocks, leaning forward with the blow so that the long lash curled down and under to cut into the vulva and lower belly. The victim shrieked and bucked with every stroke as the leather ate into her softest parts. When they let her go she whipped over onto her back and, before she clasped her wounded vulva in her hands and curled up into a foetal ball, the watchers caught a glimpse of three vivid bars, like a demon's hand print, on the base of her pale belly.

As the victor bowed to the Governor's box and walked off, head high, still attached to her defeated opponent by the chain, the attendants followed, dragging the sobbing loser away by her ankles. Claudia found herself drawing breath suddenly, as if she had been holding it for hours. There were feelings in her belly she did not fully understand. Half she identified with the victor, sharing in her triumph, half she imagined herself the loser, her vulva filled with raging agony. She turned to one of the Governor's aides.

"Are they paid well to fight like that?" she asked.

"Some are, Milady," the man replied, "though they perform rather differently. These women are not professionals, just rivals for a man, come to settle the matter. The winner has fought for her man before, and beaten off several challengers for her position in his bed."

"All that for a man?" Claudia said in surprise.

"Men are valued here," the aide told her. "In Rome, and elsewhere, women have come to scorn them, or so I believe, but in Pityus women are glad to be owned by men, and jealous of others who would take their place as first in his affections."

Claudia let it pass. It might be unwise to challenge the customs of a country where one was only a visitor. Instead she enquired after another aspect of the duel that had intrigued her.

"What was this iron, that the Governor refused her?" she asked her guide.

"Ah! The iron!" he smiled. "If a woman shows cowardice or, sometimes, if her behaviour has been notorious and earned the disapproval of the crowd, the victor may deprive her of her sex."

"Of her sex?"

"It is done with a hot iron. The sexual bud is burnt out entirely, leaving the woman deprived of sexual joy, though still not lost to any man that owns her, or has rights to her body."

Claudia shuddered, and looked back into the arena. There had been other petitioners before them, and Marcellus had not been able to gain an audience yet, and now the next event was ready to start.

It was to be a chariot race, but a race with a difference. Horses were scarce, and fodder even scarcer, and, besides, cavalry was little use high in the mountains. The light wooden cars were pulled by pairs of females, naked as was usual for all women engaged in duties connected with the state, or state enterprises, such as the games in the arena.

They were connected to the cross tree of the chariot by short chains attached to wide leather belts around their waists. Their arms were strapped behind them, and they were controlled by reins running from bits between their teeth and long cruel lashes in the drivers' hands.

The chariots lined up below the Governor's box for him to give the signal to start. Claudia looked down and inspected the women turned out as horses.

They were all strong athletic girls, specially selected from women who owed the state a service for, as she was soon to learn, all females were liable for duty of one kind or another. The chariot racing was taken very seriously.

The followers of the teams, red, blue and green, gave them fanatical support, and bet heavily on the results. Often particularly promising young women, with tall strong bodies, and good legs, would be marked down long in advance, and snapped up as soon as they became available - even, in some cases, volunteering to join one team or another.

Aesthetics came into it to some extent as well. Although it was secondary to performance, the charioteers tried to set up matched pairs of blondes or brunettes, olive skinned girls with flowing black hair, or big breasted Germans from somewhere over the Rhine. Great care had been taken with their turn-out as well as their training, and Claudia found herself admiring the beautiful plaited manes of the two big blondes nearest her, the clouds of black glossy hair, partly restrained by silver filets, of the furthest pair.

Their strong bodies were sleekly oiled, their well-developed haunches rippling with health. As they moved, they held themselves upright, almost unnaturally so it seemed, and ran with a high-stepping action. Suddenly she noticed that there were light chains woven in their hair and running down their backs, to disappear into the deep clefts between their rounded bottom cheeks.

She turned to the aide who had advised her before in the matter of the female gladiators.

"What is it that makes them move so?" she asked, "and why the chains in their hair?"

"The two are connected, as you have surmised," he answered. "The girls are trained to use this high stepping gait, which is mandatory by the rules of the games and, to ensure they keep to it, the chains are attached to bent rods fitted into their nether orifices. Thus they must run with heads held high, and raise their legs to suit. Moreover," he added, "the rods in their fundaments are covered with thick spongy sheepskin, saturated with oil expressed from wild radishes, which causes them to burn if they clench their sphincters on them, an additional stimulus to relaxing their buttocks and stepping high. All the teams are equally equipped."

Their drivers brought them to the line, and the Governor dropped his Baton of office to send them hurtling down towards the first bend. There were stone obelisks erected on square plinths towards each end of the elliptical arena and, on the base of one, were seven stone balls, painted red. As the chariots swept round the marker, one of the balls was removed, providing a record of the laps remaining.

The charioteers fought for the inside berth, flogging their own women and directing slashes of their whips at the breasts and bellies of the opposition if they could reach them, hoping to make them break stride or, at the very least, hurt them so much as to weaken them. In a torrent of cracking whips, cheering crowds, shrieking women and rumbling chariots, the four teams swept round, lap after lap. Eventually two teams were squeezed out, trailing hopelessly, while the remaining two raced neck and neck, the whips rising and falling. The Blue team just crept ahead, by the fullness of their great straining breasts, to win on the line. Claudia turned to the aide again for enlightenment, her face flushed with excitement.

"They seem very well trained," she remarked, "but they have been whipped cruelly."

"It was necessary to get the last out of them," the aide replied, "until they are in extremis they do not know themselves what they are capable of.

However," he added, "they are not necessarily treated harshly otherwise."

"They live in stables," he explained. "They are like mares all the while they are in training, and treated very much like mares too. They are well fed, their diet and exercise closely controlled, their bodies carefully watched at all times to ensure perfect fitness."

"Then they are not flogged like that in training?" Claudia asked.

"It depends on the trainer, and the girl. Some girls have to be treated very harshly, especially at first, to make them work, while others come to it wanting to make their drivers proud of them. The drivers themselves have very different philosophies. Some, like the Red driver, believe in breaking the girls from the start, then keeping them in a state of constant fear by frequent application of the whip. And sometimes other methods too, A girl rebelling against the bit may meet hot irons in her vulva or on her teats, to make her bend."

"Are they all like that then?"

"By no means," her mentor responded, "there are some, like the Blue driver who won the last race, who believe that, once broken by a severe flogging, care and affection can make the girls willing to drive themselves to and beyond the limit, just to please him, and he is top of the ratings at present."

"I could see how that could be," said Claudia pensively, remembering the half naked figure of the young god who had driven the Germanic pair, his obviously generous male endowment straining against his simple waist covering.

Feeling a seeping warmth between her legs at the thought of being in the power of his rippling muscles, she protested, "but he whipped his girls until the blood ran down their backs by the end."

"True, but they needed something more, and they will only love him more for having got them not to let him down by losing the race."

Claudia smiled secretly to herself. Yes, women, even her self, could be like that. Aloud she said, "My brother has caught the Governor's eye. I must go to him."

The two young aristocrats approached and made their bows to the military figure, in spotless white toga with a band of the Imperial purple, who occupied the seat of honour overlooking the arena.

"Marcellus Julius Travinus, Your Excellency," the young man said by way of introduction. "May I present my sister - the Lady Claudia Travina."

The Governor nodded politely in acknowledgement to Claudia, but addressed his remarks to her brother.

"Greetings Marcellus. Welcome to our city. I am given to understand you have had to leave your home in rather a hurry. Well, we are glad to offer shelter here for an able-bodied man like yourself. And able bodied women too,"

he added, nodding again towards Claudia. "All are welcome here, where we need every man and woman we can muster."

"We are both very grateful for your hospitality," Marcellus assured him,

"and very thankful to have reached Pityus. We were nearly captured by pirates when we tried to fetch Bysantium."

"Then you escaped a cruel fate," the Governor said, "we hear tales of men slaughtered and women debauched by those sea wolves."

He glanced at Claudia's delightful figure, barely concealed by the fine drapery of her carefully chosen robe.

"It would have been a waste to have had you sister stripped and taken against a pirate's mast. Still enough of such morbid thoughts. What are your impressions of our city so far?"

Marcellus laughed lightly.

"Why, your women," he answered.

"Our women?" the Governor replied. "Do they not please you?"

"Oh indeed!" the young Roman assured him. "They are very comely, from what I have seen so far, and that is rather more than I have been used to, but no more than I could find myself becoming very pleasantly accustomed to."

Claudia frowned, but he simply grinned at her and continued.

"It's just that they seem to be everywhere, and everywhere naked. Why even the competitors in the arena were females, and as for the chariots -"

"Ah, yes," the Governor replied, "I can see it may come as a surprise to one from the outside. You must understand that we are very isolated here, thrown back on own resources entirely, and consequently we do things rather differently. We must, if we are to keep the Barbarian out. We have not succumbed to the degeneracies of Rome, for which she is paying so heavy a price. Out here on the frontier we manage things better. We have always known the danger, and that it could not be faced without the united strength of the whole population, women as well as men."

"But these women. Are they slaves?"

"Oh no, just working for the state. We need every man we can get to fight and to man the forts up in the mountains, which are our defence against the enemy, who presses harder every year. So that the men are not wasted, the women must work too. And perform as well," he added, "hence the scene in the arena.

Placed as we are, so far from reinforcements and replacements and surrounded by barbarians, we cannot afford to waste a single male life. In fact we sometimes recruit women in emergencies, although loath to do so as they risk torture and rape if captured. Besides, it is dangerous to arm women and train them to fight.

They might forget their place. The gladiatrices? Their life in the ring is usually short and painful. After they are made quiescent by the hot iron, it is a matter of debate if they remain women in the full sense at all, but even women must not be wasted. They fight, but not to the death. Even if wounded, they are usually saved, then put to stud. Even if maimed or scarred, they can still use their bellies to bear new soldiers for the state."

"I gather there are fights between rivals to settle disputes over men,"

Marcellus said, "and that the winner is sometimes allowed to de-sex her rival afterwards."

"Well, yes," the Governor remarked, "I don't like to let it happen too often though, and the girl you saw this morning certainly didn't deserve it. A very game one, if a little inexperienced, so it wouldn't have been fair to have had her burnt."

"And the women we saw unloading the ship, and those hauling wagons in the streets, are they defaulters of some kind too?"

"Oh no," the Governor replied, "Those women would be doing their state service."

He looked away to where a knot of men were standing, their petitions at the ready, and down into the arena, where preparations were complete for the next event.

"I will have to finish this interview now," he said. "There are other petitioners waiting that I must not disappoint. Besides, there is a criminal to be punished, a shameless adultress, and I must watch the sentence in my official capacity. I would very much like to continue this conversation, and explain to you how things are here in Pityus. I would be most honoured if you, and your delightful sister, were to be my guests in the Palace while you are with us, and would both join me for dinner, when we can talk without being interrupted."

The two young people bowed and withdrew, turning away to view the arena again.

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